AI is for Normal People (A Manifesto)

AI is for Normal People (A Manifesto)

I can't quite remember what I would consider my "first encounter" with AI, but my best guess would be around 2008, the year I started exploring the Internet.

As someone deeply in love with learning, the Internet was like heaven – any question I had, anything I wanted to learn about, all I had to do was type it in, and off I went. Google was like my railroad to the American West – anything you could imagine was achievable, if only you took the time to embark on the journey. I also remember spending an inordinate amount of time on a website called addictinggames.com – whether that site still exists is unclear to me, and it's probably best that I don't find out.

One afternoon, I came across a website that was essentially nothing more than a text-to-speech bot hooked up to some cheaply edited pictures of chimps. Naturally, being a twelve-year-old boy, I was enamored. It took some digging, but in writing this, I was able to find it again:

I know it sounds insane, but finding this old screenshot felt like reuniting with a long-lost friend. I remember how fascinated I was that, just by typing on the computer in my parents' beige-colored dining room at a tiny wooden desk, crowded out by the modem and router, I could create what felt like magic. This wasn’t even technically “AI,” yet I spent countless days making these monkeys read out my ridiculous prepubescent ramblings. Around that same time I found some very rudimentary AI chatbots that I played around with for some time, but given that it was 2008, the capabilities were supremely limited. 

After that, there was a long, dark period in my relationship with AI. The only time it’s come to mind over the past decade has been in annoying interactions with customer service bots or in griping over social media algorithms. Then, in the summer of 2022, AI came crashing back into my life.

It was a hot summer day in Alabama, so naturally I was indoors, diving down a YouTube rabbit hole. I came across one video by Vox titled "AI Art, Explained.” It essentially was just an explainer of the mechanics behind AI artwork, specifically DALL-E 2, and a brief overview of some of the copyright arguments surrounding it at the time. This was, as they say, a “canon event” for me in my AI odyssey. From there, I wasted no time. I immediately visited OpenAI's site, created an account, and started generating images. Within 24 hours, I had incorporated AI artwork into some marketing materials for a clothing brand I was running. Over the next few days, I began obsessively learning everything about this technology, telling everyone I interacted with about it. Pretty soon after that I came upon ChatGPT – this was the nail in the coffin. I was obsessed.

As a designer by trade, the creative freedom this technology afforded me was almost unexplainable. And with a degree in Communication and a minor in Psychology, my fascination with digital agency and a complete upending of the way humans communicate with computers ran deep.

Over the past year or so, I have become a kind of proselyte of the AI revolution. I watched all three hours of the AI regulatory hearings in Congress, signed up for ChatGPT Plus, and even got a tattoo of some AI art I made. I contribute a large part of this growth and knowledge to the podcast Hard Fork, which became my gateway drug to a lifestyle of consuming AI related media. I listened to every interview Sam Altman has ever given, learning about the technology, copyright applications, and how it could revolutionize our lives.

But something has been missing. It took me a while to put my finger on it. I know AI is going to change the world; in fact, it already is. It's undoubtedly going to revolutionize how we do business and communicate with one another. There's a real, non-zero chance it might replace every human economic function, or even pose existential risks. In all of this, AI has been framed in a way that doesn't quite sit right with me.

You see, I think AI's impact is much bigger than just its economic implications or productivity hacks. Sundar Pichai said that the AI revolution would be more profound than fire or electricity in its impact on humanity. That's a substantial claim, and yet I find myself in agreement.

But I also think it's a lot smaller than those things.

I foresee a time in the near future where we look to AI as a mental sparring partner, a source of creativity and inspiration, a guiding force in complex decisions, a collaborator in our business endeavors, and a comforting presence in moments of solitude. AI won’t just be for investors, businessmen, growth hackers, or computer scientists. It’ll be for everybody, for people like you and people like me.

Maybe my experience with that monkey chatbot in my parents' computer room was onto something. Maybe AI will have a much more personal, even intimate role in our lives than any of us expect. Maybe what I’m really trying to say is that I believe, honestly, AI is for normal people.

Brady Fowlkes

Onward,

Brady Fowlkes

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